Ignace Jay Gelb (October 14, 1907December 22, 1985) was a Polish-American

Assyriologist Assyriology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logy, -logia''), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cune ...

who pioneered the scientific study of

writing systems A writing system comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independe ...

Early life

Born in

Tarnów Tarnów () is a city in southeastern Poland with 105,922 inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of 269,000 inhabitants. The city is situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. It is a major rail junction, located on the strategic east– ...

Austro-Hungarian Empire Austria-Hungary, also referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Habsburg Monarchy, was a multi-national constitutional monarchy in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. A military and diplomatic alliance, it consist ...

(now

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

), he earned his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the University of Rome in 1929, then went to the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

where he was a professor of Assyriology until his death.

Career

Although writing systems have been studied for centuries by

linguists Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds and equivalent gestures ...

, Gelb is widely regarded as the first scientific practitioner of the study of scripts, and coined the term grammatology to refer to the study of writing systems. In ''A Study of Writing'' (1952), he suggested that scripts evolve in a single direction, from logographic scripts to

syllabaries In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) morae which make up words. A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (option ...

alphabet An alphabet is a standard set of letter (alphabet), letters written to represent particular sounds in a spoken language. Specifically, letters largely correspond to phonemes as the smallest sound segments that can distinguish one word from a ...

s. This historical

typology A typology is a system of classification used to organize things according to similar or dissimilar characteristics. Groups of things within a typology are known as "types". Typologies are distinct from taxonomies in that they primarily address t ...

has been criticized as overly simplistic, forcing the data to fit the model and ignoring exceptional cases. Gelb's typology has since been refined by

Peter T. Daniels Peter T. Daniels (born December 11, 1951) is a scholar of writing systems, specializing in typology. He was co-editor (with William Bright) of the book '' The World's Writing Systems'' (1996). He was a lecturer at University of Wisconsin–Mi ...

and others. Gelb had contributed significantly to the decipherment of the

Anatolian hieroglyphs Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs. They were once commonly known as Hittite hieroglyphs, but the language they encode proved to be Luwian language, Luwian, not Hitt ...

(formerly often referred to as 'Hittite hieroglyphs'), having published 3 volumes of studies on the subject.Albrecht Goetze
"Hittite Hieroglyphs III by Ignace J. Gelb.
''Journal of the American Oriental Society'', Vol. 64, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1944), pp. 84-86 In the course of his career, he published over 20 books, that have been translated into many languages, and over 250 scientific articles.

View of the Maya

Gelb believed that the

Maya Maya may refer to: Ethnic groups * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Mayan languages, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (East Africa), a p ...

hieroglyphs did not qualify as true writing capable of representing language, which has now been disproven following the decipherment of the Maya script.

Work in Assyriology

Gelb's work in Assyriology focused on publishing editions of Akkadian texts and a grammar and dictionary of Old Akkadian. He became editor of the

Chicago Assyrian Dictionary The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) or The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago is a nine-decade project at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute (now known as the Institute for the Study of Ancient ...

in 1947 and continued work on the project until his death. His other important works include works on

Mesopotamian Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary o ...

land tenure and sales,

metrology Metrology is the scientific study of measurement. It establishes a common understanding of Unit of measurement, units, crucial in linking human activities. Modern metrology has its roots in the French Revolution's political motivation to stan ...

, and other aspects of economic and social history. Gelb, supported by Assyriologist Aage Westenholz, differentiated three stages of Old Akkadian: that of the pre-Sargonic era, that of the

Akkadian empire The Akkadian Empire () was the first known empire, succeeding the long-lived city-states of Sumer. Centered on the city of Akkad (city), Akkad ( or ) and its surrounding region, the empire united Akkadian language, Akkadian and Sumerian languag ...

, and that of the

Ur III period The Third Dynasty of Ur or Ur III was a Sumerian dynasty based in the city of Ur in the 22nd and 21st centuries BC (middle chronology). For a short period they were the preeminent power in Mesopotamia and their realm is sometimes referred to by ...

. He was a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

(1968) and of the

British Academy The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the sa ...

(1978), a member of the

Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei The (; literally the "Academy of the Lynx-Eyed"), anglicised as the Lincean Academy, is one of the oldest and most prestigious European scientific institutions, located at the Palazzo Corsini on the Via della Lungara in Rome, Italy. Founded in ...

, and in 1975 he was elected as a member of the prestigious

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

. Additionally, from 1965 to 1966 he was president of the

American Oriental Society The American Oriental Society is a learned society that encourages basic research in the languages and literatures of the Near East and Asia. It was chartered under the laws of Massachusetts on September 7, 1842. It is one of the oldest learned ...

Notes

References

* Leichty, Erle. 1998. Ignace J. Gelb (14 October 1907 - 22 December 1985). ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'' 142(4): 668–670. * *Ignace J Gelb, ''Hittite hieroglyphic monuments''. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1939. (University of Chicago Oriental Institute publications, v. 45.) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gelb, Ignace 20th-century American historians American male non-fiction writers American Assyriologists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the American Philosophical Society University of Chicago faculty Linguists from the United States Jews from Galicia (Eastern Europe) American people of Polish-Jewish descent People from Tarnów 1907 births 1985 deaths 20th-century American archaeologists 20th-century linguists 20th-century American male writers Corresponding fellows of the British Academy Polish expatriates in Italy Polish emigrants to the United States